Weird.
I almost don’t know what to say about this video. Its an advertisement from HSBC bank, pulling heart strings by depicting environmental activists doing tree-sits and forest defense, being attacked by police to let loggers into an endangered forest. A young woman activist gets out of jail, and hops on a motorcycle with her (I assume) partner, a logger. The lesson is that the bank values a diversity of perspectives and worldviews, just as this couple apparently honors the complexity of our world. All set to a Joanna Newsom song.

Its a great message, even if it still reinforces the false frame of “jobs versus the environment” and sensationalizes & romanticizes confrontation, but as an activist who has been in dangerous and confrontational situations like this before, it feels both triggering and intensely emotional to see a bank characterizing itself in this way, especially given the role of Finance in fueling climate destroying projects. At the same time, this is more of an indication of confrontational tactics moving from margin to the center of our political scene as the urgency of the Climate Crisis intensifies.

“I remixed the remix; it was back to normal!” – Mitch Hedberg
Reality TV meets the presidential debates.

My friend Jonathan McIntosh remixes videos. Specifically, he takes aspects of pop-culture and jumbles them around to make them accurate (and really funny). In his most recent video, the “So You Think You Can Dance” judges are far more honest (and tough) on the candidates stances on Clean Coal and Nuclear than the “real press” ever has been.

FromDemocracy Now!…you know the whole ridiculous republican uproar over ACORN is such a great diversion from their own dirty deeds…

Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions

Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy.

I just saw this on the Daily Kos and needed to share it here. To highlight a comment made, this is where our country is at: U.S. citizens carrying out terrorist attacks against innocent children on U.S. soil because of their Muslim religion.

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.

I read the story as reported by the Dayton Daily News, but this was after I had received an email written by a friend of some of the victims of these American terrorists. The matter of fact news report in the Dayton paper didn’t come close to conveying the horrific impact of this unthinkable act like the email I had just read, so I asked the email’s author for permission to share what they had written. The author was with one of the families from the mosque — a mother and two of the small children who were in the room that was gassed — the day after the attack occurred.

“She told me that the gas was sprayed into the room where the babies and children were being kept while their mothers prayed together their Ramadan prayers. Panicked mothers ran for their babies, crying for their children so they could flee from the gas that was burning their eyes and throats and lungs. She grabbed her youngest in her arms and grabbed the hand of her other daughter, moving with the others to exit the building and the irritating substance there.

“The paramedic said the young one was in shock, and gave her oxygen to help her breathe. The child couldn’t stop sobbing.